human ? sizes. With -l , use unit suffixes: Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte and Petabyte reducing the number of digits to three (n.m) or less (causes size not to be like a bar graph, i.e. big files have many digits)

If the output is to a terminal, total bbbbbb sum of file blocks is output on a line before each directory$BLOCKSIZE Default 512 bytes.

-R

Recursively list subdirectories

-d

Directories not searched recursively.

options affecting symbolic link display

-H

Symbolic links on the command line are followed. Assumed if none of -F, -d, or -l are specified.

-L

If argument is a symbolic link, list the references rather than the link itself. This option cancels -P .

-P

If argument is a symbolic link, list the link

-q

display non-graphic characters in file names as ?. default when output is to a terminal.

-w

raw displaying of non-printable characters. default when output is not to a terminal.

-v

unedited displaying of non-graphic characters; this is the default when output is not to a terminal.

-B

Binary filenames ; display non-displayable characters in file names as \xxx, where xxx is the numeric value of the character in octal.

-W

Display whiteouts when scanning directories.

Column formats: -1†, -C, -x, and -l override each other; the last one specified is used.
Sort time choices: -c(change) and -u(access) override each other; the last one specified isused.
Filename display : -b As -B, but use C escape codes whenever possible.-B, -b, -w, and -q override each other; the last one specified determines the format used for non-displayable characters.
Symbolic Links: -H, -L and-P override each other (either partially or fully); they are applied in the order specified.

Default, one entry per line to standard output; to terminals or with -C or -x (multi column formats.)

File information is displayed with blanks separating the information associated with the -i, -s, and -l options.

The Long Format

-l displays : type, mode, number of links, owner, group, number of bytes in the file, month, day-of-month, hour, minute file last modified, and the pathname.

If the modification time of the file is more than 6 months ago, the year is displayed instead of the hour and minutes
(see -T).

If the owner or group names are not known (example they have been deleted), or
with -n numeric ID's are displayed.

For character special or block special files the major and minor device numbers for the
file are displayed in the size field.

For symbolic links a -> and the pathname of the linked-to file is displayed

total nnnnnn number of 512-byte blocks used by the files in the directory is displayed on a line by itself before the files.
EXAMPLES
Sort by size (and shows why ls does not need a separate option for this):

ls -l | sort -n +4

-r reverse sort order.

exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

ENVIRONMENT variables

$BLOCKSIZE

default is 512.

CLICOLOR

Use ANSI color sequences to distinguish file types. See LSCOLORS.
In addition to the file types mentioned in -F†,
extra attributes (setuid etc.) are displayed. See termcap(5). in an xterm, $TERM may be set to xterm‑color. Other terminal types may require similar adjustments.
Disabled if the output isn't directed to a terminal unless $CLICOLOR_FORCE is defined.

CLICOLOR_FORCE

if set, color sequences are output even if not directed to a terminal.

LSCOLORS

colors used when enabled with CLICOLOR.
String of pairs of the format fb, where fis the foreground color and b is the background.